


the threat of knowledge

by thefudge



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Finn is force sensitive, Hand Jobs, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Rough Kissing, Sexual Tension, The Force Ships It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 07:10:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12337944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: Kylo Ren invades his space in all his savage beauty, pushing him up against the wall. (A retelling of the beginning of TFA)





	the threat of knowledge

**Author's Note:**

> well, i hope yall demons are happy. 
> 
> (also i wrote this half-asleep, don't judge my prose)

"FN-2187."

He lets the jumble of inconsequential letters and numbers roll off his tongue like mist. 

"To me." 

There is no leeway in Kylo Ren's command, and even if FN-2187 could turn around and lose himself in the violent crowd, a strange force would pull him back towards the figure in black. 

He marches to his superior, warily and inevitably. His helmet conceals his trepidation. Kylo Ren wears a helmet too. But he likely conceals his face for vastly different reasons. Reasons of power and cruelty. There is nothing he can imagine having in common with that... _machine_  of a man. 

"Sir," FN-2187 acknowledges with false bluster. 

A village is being ransacked around them. Smoke rising up into the dark night, the wail of men and women puncturing each breath he takes. He saw his friend die, but he can't remember where he left him. 

"You seem to be lacking in enthusiasm." 

The garbled words sound wrong.  _Enthusiasm_. FN-2187 can't picture such a feeling right now, not even as a means of salvation.

He should say, "Understood, Sir. I will rectify the situation immediately." Or some other overused phrase from his stormtrooper vocabulary.

But the same mysterious pull that dragged his feet forward also renders him honest. Foolishly honest.

"My - one of my colleagues suffered a fatal injury,  Sir." 

Kylo Ren takes a step towards him, robes billowing in his wake. "Were you close to him?"

The question almost sounds like an accusation. 

FN-2187 thinks,  _he was FN-2188. My next, my shadow. We shared a bunk during protocol nights..._

Kylo Ren clenches his fist. "I see."

They say he can read minds and you must be careful around him, but grief is a hard thing to banish. And Kylo Ren drinks up his grief and memories until he's had his fill.

They stand in front of each other without faces, and FN-2187 thinks that this anonymity is a blessing, that he can't be hurt by something he can't see - not where it matters. 

Oh, how wrong he is.

"You are dismissed, FN-2187. Return to the ship."

 

Late in the night, he wonders why Kylo Ren spared him the slaughter. Why he allowed him to retreat from his first fight. His hands are clean, he thinks. For now.

But at what cost? He let his friend die.

FN-2188's bunk is empty and cold, but he sleeps in it anyway. They called each other names, in secret. He was Finn. His dead friend was Ford. 

Now these names carry with them a kind of ridicule. They actually thought they had something private, a small universe of intimacy. How fragile it actually was. 

He stares up at the ceiling and whispers his name in the dark. 

 

"Finn."

He opens his eyes in the pitch black and though he sees no one, he feels warm hands on his jaw, on his chest, mapping him, caressing without destination.

“Ford?” he asks in a small voice, because this must be a dream and a consolation.

“Show me…” the voice demands softly, “…show me what you want.”

It doesn’t sound like Ford, but he has a deep certainty it _is_ his friend. This person has come through the veil of death just to hold him. It must be him.

So he raises his arm and pulls the figure towards him until he can feel his hot breath on his throat and his large, sinewy body dwarfing his. He is bigger than Ford, almost clumsy in his gigantic frame. A cacophony of limbs envelop him. Finn can feel the man's need as his cock presses against his leg. His lips are cold to touch, but the kiss is hungry, painfully hungry, tearing into him, biting off whole chunks. 

Finn’s hands sink into long, soft locks. Ford had rough short hair, but it doesn’t matter now. He’s dead.

The figure leaves cold kisses down the length of his throat and it feels like being choked.

He’s losing his breath…slowly…falling asleep…or waking up, kissing back, biting into someone’s shoulder as he comes…as he spills all over cold fingers…  

 _FN-2187_ , his mind screams. A foreign voice, but a familiar touch.

Finn opens his eyes.

He’s panting, his breath short in his throat.

He’s still lying in Ford’s bunk, staring at the ceiling.

 _To me_ , the echo whispers. And Finn wraps himself in his thick blanket, trying to quell a sudden, inexplicable thirst. A pull.

 

He is walking down the corridor behind Phasma who is giving him detailed instructions for his next mission – with Ford’s death, he has been promoted to leader of his own squad - when Kylo Ren blocks their path from an archway.

“Ren.”

“Phasma. I'm here to inform you that FN-2187 is no longer an active stormtrooper under your command.”

His commander has the presence of mind to sound outraged. “ _Since when_?”

“Effective immediately. He performed poorly during the attack on Tuanul.”

“That is to be determined by a committee after the submission of a special report –” Phasma interjects angrily.

“Supreme Leader Snoke agrees with me that such weaklings must not be allowed to thrive in our midst.”

“What do you intend to do with him, then? He has been my subordinate for the past ten years!” Phasma barks.

Although Finn cannot see his expression through his mask, he hears the dark humor in his voice.

“I intend to show him true strength. When he is done learning, he will return to you.”

 

Finn ought to be afraid. He’s always afraid, if he were truly honest. The First Order slips fear into your bloodstream until your blood is happy to greet it.

But he also feels a desperate unmooring, as if a change is about to take place. And any change is the possibility of something – something better. Hope is not slipped into his bloodstream, but his blood is happy to greet it anyway. 

He walks behind Kylo Ren, his new commander.

 

“Take off your helmet and armor,” he orders.

Finn stands in the middle of Ren’s private quarters. They are sparse and elegant and frigid. There is no place to sit, no place to hide.

He swallows thickly, the bile rising in his throat, but with it, a sweetness too.

It takes him a long time to get out of his white cage.

When he finally turns around in his standard uniform, he falters. He takes several steps back and hits a wall.

Before him stands a young man with perfect porcelain skin and deep, unsheltered eyes. His face is too wide, too open. Like the green fields he has never seen. His hair is long and soft. It’s all too familiar.

“You feel a certain…attraction to the Force. I have sensed it. That is why I singled you out,” Ren speaks sedately, in a strange, husky monotone. "Can you feel it?"

Finn wants to shutter his ears.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sir.”

Kylo Ren invades his space in all his savage beauty, pushing him up against the wall.

His lips curl in humor or cruelty or something else. “You will.”

 

When he finds his pilot, he doesn’t look back. He runs.

He doesn’t tell Poe Dameron that it’s not heroics which has led him to desert The First Order. He doesn't tell him it's the threat of knowledge, the threat of finding himself...in a dark room...with teeth marks on his throat.

When Poe tells him, “FN-2187. That’s too long…I think I’ll call you Finn. How about that?”

He agrees enthusiastically, he likes the sound of that. He forces himself to forget about Ford. About Kylo Ren.

About the cold man calling his name in his head repeatedly as he flees the ship.

_Finn…Finn…I know what you’re doing. You cannot run away from me._

_I will find you. I’ll always find you._

And Finn knows that is a certainty. So he must run forever, he must get away as far as possible.

Because there is the chance, the terrible, ungodly chance, that one day, he will let Kylo Ren catch him.


End file.
